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Sparkle (7)
Own Your Beauty is a groundbreaking, year-long movement bringing women together to change the conversation about what beauty means. Our mission: to encourage and remind grown women that it is never too late to learn to love one's self and influence the lives of those around us - our mothers, friends, children, neighbors. We can shift our minds and hearts and change the path we follow in the pursuit of authentic beauty.
It was a mistake. An error in a shipping label or a database glitch, maybe, but a mistake for sure.
And yet this completely coincidental accident seemed anything but coincidental.
It was odd for me to email her. Although we’ve met once and I’ve written about her here, Karen and I aren’t close friends. Certainly not the kind of friends that email each other on the way home from therapy.
And yet, as I drove down the Interstate last Wednesday morning with the sticky residue of tears on my cheeks, I knew I had to email her. I had to get answers, and my gut was certain that she was the place to start. I got home and logged onto my email before I lost my nerve; I knew it was presumptuous to drag this casual acquaintance into my darkest place, my Original Hurt, if you will.
When you took my photo in NYC, was it hard to take a picture of me because of my lazy eyes?
I wanted to throw up as soon as I hit send. Typing the words was damn near as painful as saying them out loud, something I go to great lengths to avoid with phrases like “you know” and “eye thing” and “Vote for a Democrat! WHO WANTS PIE?!?” The oldest scab on my psyche had been picked at in my therapist’s office, and now I was picking at it here on the Internet without a safety net. But I couldn’t take them back now.
It only took her 16 minutes to respond.
The general idea was that, no, nothing had interfered with her ability to take my picture. She went on to talk a little about her philosophy as a photographer, about capturing a person’s “spark,” things like that. There were nearly 300 words in her email about taking pictures of people and genuine beauty and universal beauty and blah blah blah. Nearly 300 words total, but 27 lept off the screen and kicked me in my gut.
I will admit, when I first met you, I was surprised by your eyes —- not put off in any way, you understand, it was just unexpected.
And there it was. Confirmation of what I already knew. Here, amidst kind words from a woman who had no intention of hurting me, was the truth I was constantly trying to duck.
The first thing you notice when you see me in person is that I am a freak. There is something wrong with me. From every moment on, you will be struggling to overcome this freakishness out of respect for my personality, but always at the root of what you see -– of who I am –- is a cross-eyed girl.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. The fact that my eyes tend to turn in is a physical fact, not an opinion about my character or a preference of type. It is what it is, and what it is is always there. Unavoidable. The first thing you see if you shake my hand and look me in the face, as strangers tend to do when they are meeting for the first time and shaking hands.
For the second time in one day, I found myself drowning in a lifetime of emotions that had been carefully kept just out of reach. Wave after wave of shame and anger washed over me, each one deeper than the next. I groped for reassurance, for the lifelines I had clung to for 30 years. Thirty years of avoiding mirrors and hating pictures and hoping my eyes squinted when I smiled really big. Thirty years of forgetting for a moment what I looked liked and being ashamed when I remembered the truth. Thirty years of being both grateful and resentful of the pity that those who loved me bestowed upon me in order to love me, in order to see past my shame and find something beautiful to comment on.
But there were no more lifelines. The truth I’d been avoiding was that there was no reassurance in the world that could change me. I could delude myself temporarily, but
